


Ha'malach Sheli

by jane_x80



Series: Listen To My Heart [2]
Category: NCIS
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angels, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 08:48:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12931758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jane_x80/pseuds/jane_x80
Summary: It is Tali and Tony's first Hanukkah and Christmas after Ziva's death. They are living in Paris and Tali has questions about angels and what happens after someone dies. Takes place several months before Gibbs encounters Tony and Tali in Peru, a little vignette in the Listen To My Heart 'verse.ForDay 6 of the Happy Holidays Challenge on LiveJournal, the theme is Angels/Snow Angels.





	Ha'malach Sheli

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Red_Pink_Dots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Pink_Dots/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Art for Ha’malach Sheli](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12915846) by [Red_Pink_Dots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Pink_Dots/pseuds/Red_Pink_Dots). 



> This story fulfills the Angels/Snow Angels theme, but really it was also a Holiday artwork prompt proposed by [Red_Pink_Dots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Pink_Dots/pseuds/Red_Pink_Dots). She and I sat and talked through some of the themes because neither of us quite knew what we wanted to do and we wanted to participate in the holiday challenge, so for this (and several more to come), Red_Pink_Dots found several pictures and we based the stories around it. RPD, is as always, my partner in crime, artist, cheerleader, omega reader, and my Elton. Without her, there would be far fewer of these Holiday stories! Merci beaucoup, ma chere amie! Je t'embrasse bien fort!
> 
> So yes, the fabulous artwork is by Red_Pink_Dots. The title translates to "My Angel".
> 
> The song that helped inspire me to write this, which I listened to obsessively as I wrote this, is Billy Joel's [Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcnd55tLCv8)
> 
> You don't have to have read Listen To My Heart to read this story, just know that in this 'verse, Tony and Ziva were raising Tali together in secret, unbeknownst to everyone at NCIS, and that Tony and Ziva have a platonic relationship but a very close friendship. This story can stand alone.

[](https://i.imgur.com/mxJgIyH.png)

They had just moved into the furnished apartment in a swanky neighborhood in the Seventh Arondissement in Paris, not too far from the Eiffel Tower. Orli had suggested living somewhere closer to the embassy, but Tony felt that it would have made them even more of a target. So he tapped into his trust fund – the secret one that his father didn’t know existed, the unbelievably bottomless one, that had been left to him by his mother and his uncle Clive, that he didn’t even know about until his fortieth birthday – and leased a fully furnished apartment, lavish by Parisian standards but certainly nowhere as large as the farmhouse had been or their apartment in Tel Aviv. But it was home now, and Tony started teaching in the new year, a week or so later.

It was late and Tali was asleep, but Tony was, as usual, wracked with insomnia. He sat in the little music room that housed an old but well maintained upright, with keys a touch softer than his own baby grand now in storage. The piano was one of the things that had made him choose this particular apartment. That and the fact that the little music room was soundproofed, so he could sit there and play in the middle of the night without waking anyone in the apartment, or the building, as the realtor had assured him. He sat there, absently fingering the keys, picking out a song or two, but not really settling in to play. He didn’t know the sounds of Paris and the sounds of the apartment yet, so he startled at just about everything, which did not help him sleep. Sitting here in the soundproofed music room was the most at peace he’d felt in a while.

He sighed. It was the first Christmas and Hanukkah for Tali without Ziva. She was not much more than a baby, really, and was already starting to forget Ziva. She missed her, but the details were blurring in her little mind. And Tony was both glad and sad about it, glad that Tali wouldn’t keep grieving as deeply as she had been, and sad because Tali would never get to know her Imah. Not in the way that she would have had she continued to grow up with both him and Ziva, which had been the original plan.

“Mama?” the little voice startled him and made him jump.

“Baby?” he turned and saw his daughter cracking the music room door open and peering tentatively around it. He held his arms out to her and gestured her over and Tali padded in, wearing the fleece footed pajamas that Abby had sent her for the winter in Paris, her favorite stuffed bunny clutched tightly. He picked her up and settled her in his lap, surrounding her with his arms, kissing her honey colored curls. “What’s wrong? Why are you still up?”

“I was just thinking and my thoughts kept me awake.”

“You want to talk to me about it?”

Tali nodded. “Where do people go when they die, Mama?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, today, Jean-Paul said that his _maman_ said that when his grandmother died, she became an angel. So she can watch over them all.”

“Oh.” Jean-Paul lived next door to them, a boy a year or so older than Tali. Tony had met the neighbors and the kids had gotten along. The couple had seemed nice, and didn’t look twice at Tony, Tali and Isak. They were often mistaken for a family unit, and Tony didn’t bother correcting people. “I don’t know where people go after they die,” one of the things both he and Ziva had agreed on was that they wouldn’t lie to Tali. They might soften the truth at times, but he wasn’t going to tell Tali a bald-faced lie, when he didn’t know where people went after they died. He knew what his Catholic upbringing would have said, but he wasn’t going to tell Tali something he didn’t truly believe in.

“Do you think Imah is an angel, Mama?”

She’s probably watching over us, yelling at me not to fuck up this discussion, Tony thought to himself, and that brought a smile to his face as he squelched his laughter. He didn’t want Tali to think he was laughing at her or her question.

“I’m sure she’s watching over us. Watching over you, especially. Making sure you’re safe and happy,” he told her.

Tali frowned and pouted. “I don’t understand it.”

“What don’t you understand?” Tony started rocking her in his arms. It was a habit he could never break himself of, how he rocked her when she was an infant, how he used to calm her cries as a baby. He still found himself rocking her now even though she was fully capable of understanding his words.

“How can a grown up turn into a baby with wings after they die?” Tali looked up at him with his own green eyes, confused and worried. “I’ve seen the angel statues around. There are millions of them in Paris. They’re all fat babies with wings. Mostly naked. Sometimes they’re even going potty in a fountain! I don’t think Imah would like that _at all_.”

This time Tony couldn’t help it. The image of Ziva as a grumpy fat naked cherub was too much. He snorted with laughter. “No, you know, you’re right. She would _absolutely_ hate that.”

“Right?” Tali nodded seriously. “So does that mean she’s not an angel? And she can’t see us anymore?”

“Sweetheart, you know that she didn’t want to leave you, right?”

“I know, Mama.”

Tony sighed and rubbed Tali’s back. “Do you want to know what I think an angel is?”

Tali looked up and nodded, and Tony ran his thumb down his daughter’s cheek and kissed it.

“I think an angel is someone who loves their family so much they don’t want to leave, even after they die. And they can look like anything. They don’t have to be naked or fat or have wings…”

“Although wings are cool.”

“Although wings are cool,” he agreed. “But the point being, I don’t know what happens to a person after they die, but I do believe that your Imah is watching over us. And you know she would never fit into a stereotype, not even as an angel.”

“What’s a stereotype?”

Tony hummed thoughtfully. “A stereotype is something that people think is normal or typical of what somebody or something is. Like many people think an angel is a fat, naked, winged baby.”

“Or like when people think Mamas have to act a certain way and you don’t? And how Imah used to say that that was because you’re unique?” Tali was always sharp that way, Tony marveled. How she understood so many things about people, even though she was still so little.

“Right. Exactly.”

“OK.”

“You see how Imah would never have fit into the stereotype of an angel, right?”

Tali nodded, green eyes wide and serious.

“So I think you can imagine Imah to be an angel who looks like she does. Like she did.” The correction of tense made Tony swallow with difficulty.

“With wings?”

“If you like.”

“I think Imah would totally rock the wings.”

Tony grinned at that. “That she would.”

“I miss her. Do you think she misses me?”

“I think she couldn’t miss you, because she will always be with you, my love,” Tony told her. “You will carry a piece of her in your heart, all your life. Every time you think of her, and every time you remember her, every time we talk about her and look at her pictures, she will be with us. So she can’t miss you when she’s always with you.”

“Is she watching over me?”

“I believe she is, yes.”

“Is she watching over you, too?”

“I think so, yes.”

“Good. Because she won’t let anything happen to you. I don’t want you to die, too.”

Tony’s arms tightened around his daughter. “You know I’m going to do my best to stick around, right?”

Tali nodded.

“Good. But even if something happened to me, you know that I will always love you, and I will always watch over you, right?”

Tali nodded slowly. “I don’t think you’d be a fat naked baby angel either.”

Tony chuckled at that. “No. No, I’d probably rebel if I had to be a fat naked baby angel.”

“Mama?”

“Yes, my love?”

“Can we go and light a candle for Imah tomorrow? At a church? Jean-Paul says they do that for his grandmother.”

“Of course, baby.”

“I hope Imah will see us light a candle for her.”

“I’m sure she will.”

They sat in silence for a while, Tony rocking Tali gently. She yawned and plinked a few keys. “Play me a song, Mama,” she said around a yawn.

Tony resettled her in his lap a little more securely and she snuggled into his chest, arms going around his waist. Tony thought for a second before he played the opening chords, and then softly began to sing.

_Goodnight my angel, time to close your eyes_  
_And save these questions for another day_  
_I think I know what you've been asking me_  
_I think you know what I've been trying to say_  
_I promised I would never leave you_  
_Then you should always know_  
_Wherever you may go, no matter where you are_  
_I never will be far away_

 

_Goodnight my angel, now it's time to sleep_  
_And still so many things I want to say_  
_Remember all the songs you sang for me_  
_When we went sailing on an emerald bay_  
_And like a boat out on the ocean_  
_I'm rocking you to sleep_  
_The water's dark and deep, inside this ancient heart_  
_You'll always be a part of me_

 

_Goodnight my angel, now it's time to dream_  
_And dream how wonderful your life will be_  
_Someday your child may cry, and if you sing this lullaby_  
_Then in your heart there will always be a part of me_  
_Someday we'll all be gone_  
_But lullabies go on and on_  
_They never die_  
_That's how you and I will be_

When the last chord died away, Tali was mostly asleep in his lap. He gathered her up carefully, and carried her to her bedroom, tucking her in and kissing her forehead. She blinked sleepily up at him, smiled, before she pulled her stuffed bunny close, turned onto her belly and went right to sleep. Tony ran his fingers through her hair, petting her curls and smiled down at her.

“Good night, my angel,” he whispered. “Ha’malach sheli.”

**Author's Note:**

> I put this in the Listen To My Heart 'verse, because I felt that the story is more poignant knowing that both Tony and Tali had had a beautiful relationship with Ziva, where Tony and Ziva had both been parental figures to Tali, and that Ziva was Tali's Imah, whether or not she gave birth to her.
> 
> Hope y'all enjoyed this. And look, Tony's hale and hearty again! ;)
> 
> Thank you again to the incomparable [Red_Pink_Dots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Pink_Dots/pseuds/Red_Pink_Dots) for the amazing artwork, the always lovely and fun collaboration, and for the artwork prompt!
> 
> The music of Billy Joel is just amazing, and [Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcnd55tLCv8) is one of my favorites. It is the song that Tony sings in this story.
> 
> See y'all soon!
> 
> <3  
> -j  
> xoxo

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art for Ha’malach Sheli](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12915846) by [Red_Pink_Dots](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Red_Pink_Dots/pseuds/Red_Pink_Dots)




End file.
